dden puff of red on the starboard stern, and then the Stick dropped from the sky like a rock and crashed just outside a corn field, about four miles from the farm's central compound.

It drove them insane. They were so sure that the mines were using telemetry to lock on to Sticks, but now it was apparent that that wasn't the case. They again grounded the Stick fleet and used other dropships to try to move cargo, but it wasn't even a quarter as efficient. They had plenty of other dropships, but their entire cargo delivery system was based on the launching and recovery of Sticks. They tried that for three days, but then the food distribution system was getting so backed up, as warehouses filled up, that they had no choice but to return Sticks to service and simply endure the losses with gritted teeth while they tried to determine how the mines were working and engineered a solution. So far, in just two weeks, they had lost nearly a half a million credits' worth of Sticks and cargo. And if they couldn't defeat the mines, then it would result in an _astronomical_ bill as they equipped every Stick with shields and armor to protect them from the mines. That would take tremendous amounts of time and money, and that was something that they didn't want to expend unless they had no other choice.

About that time, the next little headache for Trillane made its appearance. It was an old surplus-era plasma cannon attached to a gravimetric engine pod and a power plant. It was invisible to active sensors, thanks to its inverse phase emitter, and had been planted in deep space between the Earth and the moon, and set so it would slowly drift in the direction it needed to go. That cannon activated when it drifted into the primary supply lane between the orbital station and the stargate, firing relentlessly on every Stick its onboard computer could identify, firing with a power rating _much_ greater than what was normal for a plasma cannon of that type. It attacked the supply lane for three minutes; that was how long it took for Trillane to scramble a fighter to get there and destroy the device. But in that three minutes, the plasma cannon either destroyed or seriously damaged 7 Sticks. When the fighter entered the cannon's sensor range, it immediately self-destructed, denying Trillane any chance that they could capture it and figure out how it worked, and thereby engineer a defense against it.

That single attack sent a shockwave through Trillane. They analyzed what data they had feverishly, both trying to figure out a way to detect the object that their space-pointing sensors had simply classified as a low-grade anomaly, which was a small meteor, and how the cannon had been altered to fire such a powerful shot. Again, it was because it was meant as a suicide weapon. Jason had overloaded the power rating, which would let it fire at a greatly increased power, but would burn out the gun in the process and make it unusable. Rigged the way it was, the weapon could only fire about twenty times before it burned out its power systems and became unusable. That was irrelevant, since the gun would self destruct anyway, and it wouldn't be shooting that long before it blew itself up.

About then, they realized they weren't just dealing with a single man with a large toy box. The mines they could explain given he was a notoriously clever engineer, and was using what parts were available, but he had gotten his hands on a plasma cannon, and that, he had to _buy_. Now they knew that Jason had to be buying the materials to build these objects, and he had to be getting it from _somewhere_, and he had to be getting his money from _somewhere_. So, while the military arm was trying to work up defenses against the two attacks they'd seen so far, the intelligence arm started turning Earth upside down and shaking it to see what fell out. Accountants and financiers hired by Trillane tore through all the financial records of every company doing business on Earth, searching for anything that might indicate that the company was doing business with Jason Fox, or was somehow funneling materials to him. They already knew he had a skimmer, and that he had somehow altered his skimmer to hide from sensors, so they concentrated instead on the point of interface between his skimmer and the outside world; the companies that were selling him his equipment. They didn't think he was directly getting his supplies offworld, for nothing could go through the gate with its active systems going, and that would include any kind of stealth device. They believed they had him pinned in this system, and that was where they were concentrating their search.

Actually, that was a smart way to go about it, and naturally, they'd already had taken that into account. He'd been expecting it, but now that Kumi was hiding Vultech's illegal activities, he knew they'd never find out it was Vultech doing it. Surely, it would get some heated attention because the company was listed as being owned by a human, but Kumi's books were ironclad, and they would be forced to admit that this human-owned technology company, a prime suspect for being a rebel sympathizer, was totally legit. Everything, even down to the titanium board mounting clips, could be accounted for with receipts and inventory manifests. They could look at Vultech's books with a magnifying glass, but they'd find nothing but what looked like perfectly legitimate transactions, all tracked with meticulous care and documented in triplicate.

They even visited Vultech in person. Songa was there, of course, and Jack Brewer was also there... or who they thought was Jack Brewer. It was actually Luke. And unlike before, where the human simply relied on the telepath to protect them, this time who they were dealing with was someone who really thought he was who he was. That was Jyslin's doing. Luke had volunteered for it, and Jyslin had used her telepathic gifts to create a new persona in Luke's mind, named Jack Brewer, complete with his own personality, memories, and history that matched the "official" records on Jack Brewer that existed in the databanks... thanks to Kumi. What she had done was very advanced, and very delicate, and only a telepath of Jyslin's power and training could have pulled it off. But it was utterly convincing, for the Faey that interrogated Songa and Luke found a human that _believed_ everything he told them. He _was_ Jack Brewer, and they'd never believe that they were dealing with a construct called a _psychic clone_. When the inspectors left, Jyslin sealed away the part of Luke's mind that was Jack Brewer in the back of his subconscious, so Luke could be Luke again, but all that work was still there and ready to be brought back out if the Imperium wanted another face to face meeting with Jack Brewer.

It said a great deal about Luke's commitment to the cause, that he would volunteer to let Jyslin literally fragment his conscious into two parts and then shape the fragment into a completely new personality.

They lost 17 more Sticks in the two weeks that followed. After a month, the tally wasn't something that would make a military woman grumble that much, but the _economic_ toll it had exacted was not something to laugh about. In the first month since Jason had started a seeming one man war against Trillane, they had lost 48 Sticks, and were looking at a financial loss in equipment, cargo, and supplies of C3,948,932. Trillane's _monthly_ total operating budget was around C1,500,000,000, so this was less than 1% of their monthly budget... but Trillane knew that it was going to add up, and add up _fast_ if they didn't put a stop to it quickly.

And it was more than just materials. Stick pilots were now demanding combat pay for flying to and from Terra, and quite a few of them had simply quit and gotten jobs as pilots for other noble houses. After the first month, Trillane was dealing with a pilot shortage, as well as facing the reality that they were going to have to raise the pay for the pilots that were willing to fly Terran space in order to keep them on the job, which would cut deeper into the profit margin.

And thanks to that damned INN story and the posting of the declaration on CivNet, the Stick pilots _knew_ it was a combat theater. Had he not done that, had he simply started blowing up Sticks in silence, they could have explained it away or covered up what was going on. But thanks to that video, the whole Imperium knew that Trillane was dealing with an insurgent, and what was disconcerting to the Imperium and embarrassing to Trillane, and insurgent that Trillane could not find, who continued to attack Trillane interests with impunity, almost at will. It was much a public relations issue as it was a security issue, because just as Jason Fox once embarrassed the Imperial Marines, now he was embarrassing House Trillane... and that was about the worst thing one could do to a Faey. Their standing was very important to them, be it an individual or a noble house, and Jason was threatening that standing.

It also had other repercussions, one that Jason found on his desk one morning in early August, after returning from his minelaying duties. He usually did that in his skimmer, because it was small and it was an easy affair, and it was a perfect chance to give the trainees some real time behind the controls of something that wasn't a simulation. That night, Symone and Temika had been his helpers, and Temika did most of the flying while Jason watched and Symone prepped the mines.

"What is this?" Jason asked as he sat down at a small desk off the main control room, where a small handpanel holding a picture sat waiting for him. Tim came around the desk and put another handpanel down by the first. For some odd reason, when Jason and Tim were alone, they almost exclusive spoke. It was almost as if they were simply continuing their friendship on the grounds upon which it was formed, and that meant using their voices. They had no qualms about sending to each other in groups or when distance separated them, but when they stood face to face and they were alone, they almost never sent to each other.

"This is the Imperium's answer," he answered. "Meet Myleena Merrane. She's an Imperial attach sent by Dahnai herself, sent to help Trillane deal with us."

Jason picked up the panel holding the picture. It showed a young Faey woman wearing a Class A uniform, a Lieutenant Commander by her rank. She was actually a pretty young lady, with blond hair, dark blue skin that showed she spent a good deal of time outside, and pattern Faey features. She had large, expressive eyes with rose-colored irises, a dark pink that bordered on red, which was a bit unusual, and she had faint freckles under her eyes, high on her cheeks. Kiaari and Tim had clearly done their homework, for the handpanel Tim handed to him was a full biographical history of this woman. She was a minor noble within House Merrane, the lowest rung of the hierarchy, not even a Zarina. She was a _morana_, a noble-born in no official position within the house, basically a noble in name only. She had given up her Zarina title when she entered into the Imperial service. She worked in Black Ops, and was the head of a unit within Black Ops called the Skulkers. They specialized in unconventional warfare.

"A Merrane?"

"Yeah, but she gave up her house duties to go into the Imperial government," Tim told him. "Kiaari dug up all the dirt on her. She's a Black Ops engineer, active duty Navy, that's required for Black Ops positions, but she specializes in unconventional technological warfare. The mines and shit we're using is right up her alley. She even commands a unit within Black Ops that handles making it and countering it. They sent her unit to figure out how we're doing it, and stop us. From what Kiaari dug up, she's good. She's _real_ good. Top of her class at Dracora Engineering Academy, below the zone promotions, commendations and meritorious service awards out the ass. She's only 35, and she's already a Lieutenant Commander and has more medals on her chest than Admirals three times her age. She's also rich. She has 13 patents out and rakes in over two million a year in royalties and residuals. She doesn't do what she does for the money, that's for sure."

"So, they can't figure out the mines."

"Actually, I think it was the gun that brought her here," Tim told him. "They don't want to see what we think up next, so they're gonna try to hamstring us by sending in a professional. That gun scared the hell out of them, Jayce, way more than the mines."

"That's about when they started looking into Vultech," Jason recalled.

Tim nodded. "That was when they realized this isn't a one man operation. They've pieced together that you're getting help from other squatters in the preserve, but they haven't quite figured out we moved, or how much help we have. But the point is, they know they're dealing with a _group_, not a _person_, and they want us stopped _fast_. They don't want our successes giving anyone else any bright ideas, especially not now, when they know that some humans are telepaths."

"And they send this girl," Jason mused.

"Well, given she's older than us, we can't really call her a girl," Tim chuckled. "She is cute though."

"Symone would box your ears for saying that," he grinned.

"No, she'd make me compare her and this girl. If I said she was _cuter_ than Symone, then I'd get my ears boxed."

"Kind of like that time you told Symone that Jyslin had a cuter ass?"

"Just about," he said blandly. "Anyway, she just arrived in Washington about an hour ago with a team of ten engineers, and after they meet with the brass, they're gonna be getting to work. There's that, and there's this." He handed Jason one more handpanel. "Remember that operation Trillane was planning for the preserve before Chesapeake? Well, they're going in. I already warned Charleston. They've shut everything down and went to ground, cause Faey are swarming all over the forest, looking for _us_. They're searching in a radial pattern with the ruins of Chesapeake in the middle."

"Are they going to be alright there?"

Tim blew out his breath. "I'm not sure. They're not just doing a sensor sweep from dropships, Jayce, they've got soldiers on the ground, and they're not paying attention to what their sensors are telling them. They know we can hide from sensors, so they're doing it the old fashioned way. I warned Charleston about it. They've shut everything down, even the hologram, hid everything they're not supposed to have, covered the projectors, and now they're hiding out in the caves southwest of the city. They have plenty of food, and it's summer, so they don't have to worry too much. They just need to stay out of sight and let the Faey pass by, that's all. As long as they stay underground, they should avoid the sensors, and I doubt the Faey will find them in the forest."

"I hope so," Jason said quietly. "We tried to make things safe for them."

"We never expected a ground search like this one," Tim grunted. "But we should have. I'm glad we listened to Kate. It's why I had a plan ready just in case."

"She expected this?"

"Not exactly, but she said we should be prepared for it if it did happen... and it looks like it is. I should have paid more attention to it, but with all that's been going on"

"If we could see everything coming, we wouldn't be where we are now, Tim," Jason chuckled.

The door opened, and Kumi sauntered in. She was wearing a simple black halter and a pair of shorts. She had a towel over her shoulders, holding onto it with a hand on either end. _Hey babe,_ she sent. Kumi, like Jyslin, never spoke aloud to him. She always sent. But where Jyslin did it because it was more intimate, Jason felt that Kumi did it just to revel in the fact that he had talent. _Whatcha up to?_

"Looking over the daily mail," Jason told her as he sat back down. She came over and sat on the desk, and picked up the handpanel with Myleena Merrane's picture on it.

_Who's this? A Merrane, eh?_

"How can you tell, Kumi?" Tim asked.

_See this tassel right here, how it has gold filaments in it? That marks her as a member of the Empress' noble house, so that means she's a Merrane,_ she answered, holding the panel up and showing it to him. She picked up the other panel and scanned it. _A Black Ops engineer? I guess we pissed them off,_ she said with an audible giggle. _They sent her to stop the mines?_

_I guess so, Jason answered. If she's as good as what Kate dug up on her suggests, it means it's going to get interesting. What are you up to?_

_Getting ready to go down and use the swimming pool. Tom got it cleaned up and its usable now. I'm not sure how much I'm going to like swimming in a sport bra and shorts, though. I might just take them off and swim naked. I certainly don't want to get wet shorts bunched up between my ass cheeks. Wearing shorts would be just fine for playing in the pool, but I'm going to swim laps. So, think you can call Songa and have her track down a swimsuit for me?_

_I think she can manage, if you give her your size, Jason told her. You won't get it until tomorrow, though. And you certainly don't want to call her right now. We dropped Rann off in Lincoln last night._

_Ohhh, I'll bet my panties he's giving her an exhaustive pelvic exam right now, she sniggered. It's been a few days since they've been together._

_So don't interrupt their private time, Jason warned. Call this afternoon. I think I'm gonna be busy for a while, he said, picking up the picture of Myleena Merrane and staring at it. Was she really that good? If so, then things were going to get very interesting. In a way, in some masochistic fashion, he was rather looking forward to the idea of crossing swords with one of Black Ops' best in a battle of wits. She would try to foil his plans, and he would try to get around her. He gave Kumi a look._

_What?_

"Tim, you think Kumi and this woman are about the same size?" he asked.

Tim looked her up and down, then picked up the handpanel holding her bio. "About. She's a little taller, but I'd say Kumi's about her size."

"Good. Still have that camera, Kumi? And mind taking your clothes off?"

_For you, babe? Never,_ she sent with a slight leer. _You want a sexy pic of me to hang on your wall and remind Jyslin just where you'll end up if she doesn't treat you right?_

"No, this is something else. Just to warn you, the pic I intend to take won't be... proper."

_Oooh, you want a _dirty_ pic, eh? Well, I think I can put aside my sense of moral outrage if it gets you off._

_It's not to get me off, silly. We're going to welcome Myleena Merrane to Earth in true Legion fashion. With a little photo doctoring, that is._

_Kumi gave him a look, then exploded into laughter. Jason, that's evil! Where are you gonna put it?_

_I'm going to embed it in the programming of the mines. If they ever capture one without it exploding, the mine will wipe its memory, but it's going to leave this. She'll find it when they analyze the mine. We can't let her think we didn't notice her arrival, can we? At least without making it common knowledge we have our hands in Trillane's comm network. This way we send a personal message._

"I'll say!" Tim laughed.

The picture was an easy enough affair, and they decided to take it in the same briefing room where Jason had delivered his message. Kumi had a blast, maybe enjoying the idea of it a little _too_ much as she splayed herself on top of that ebony desk in a very graphic pose, giving the camera a wicked smile. Once they had the picture, Tim doctored it by finding another picture of Myleena Merrane from the CivNet archives, isolated her head, totally removing Kumi's head in the picture, obliterating the underlying imaging so they couldn't possibly extract the true head attached to that body, then they pasted it on. Tim smoothed the edges enough to make it look more or less continuous, and the result was a picture that was obviously doctored, but looked just real enough to pass muster on a casual glance.

All in all, Jason was satisfied. He converted the picture to raw code and embedded it in the mine. They'd open it up and find the main memory crystals wiped, but there would be this one crystal left with data. They'd analyze it, find it was a picture, and being curious engineers, they'd just _have_ to look at it. They'd bring it up on a monitor... and there would be Myleena Merrane, doing something best left undescribed for the benefit of a camera.

Kumi wandered off to get her swimming in as Tim and Jason finished up the code changes. "Good _god_ is that woman nasty," Tim said in a low tone, full of wonder, after Kumi left.

"Kumi's a noble, Tim," Jason chuckled. "She's more worldly than everyone in this mountain put together."

"Worldly my ass. When she_fuck_," he breathed, shaking his head a little. "Right in front of us! And I thought what Jyslin did in Hawaii was hot because she was so fuckin' fearless about it."

"She did that on purpose, Tim," he said calmly. "You know Faey."

"Yeah, I know, she was doing it on purpose to get to us. Well, it worked on me," he admitted. "I think I'm gonna go find Symone, right now."

"Have fun," Jason told him.

"I knew you were calm, but you must have ice in your blood," he laughed.

"It's not about that," he chuckled. "Kumi is a very beautiful girl, she's funny, she's got a great personality, a very hot body, and I love her as a friend. But let's be honest here. She could make a eunuch horny. She gets to me too."

_I _heard_ that!_ Kumi's sending reached to him, almost dripping with both sensuality and victorious smugness. She was standing on the other side of the door.

_Too bad that's all you're getting,_ Jason sent calmly.

_Bull _shit_ is that all I'm getting! I told you before, babe, I will have my revenge! I'm just waiting for the right moment. And the licensing rights for the pay per view,_ she added.

Jason laughed aloud. _Suuuure,_ he drawled.

_Now that I know I can get you hard, it's just a matter of time,_ she shot back.

_Too bad for you there's two girls standing ahead of you in the line,_ he answered evenly.

_Asshole!_ she grated, then stalked off.

Tim looked at him, then laughed. "You're playing with fire."

"Since when am I not?"

                                        * * *

Myleena Merrane's introduction into the equation, like any Faey calculus problem, changed _everything_. In just two days, she made her presence known in ways that Jason didn't fully appreciate. Within hours after arriving, they were already analyzing the wreckage of Sticks, going over them literally with microscopes, Kiaari had reported. Once they were done, they ranged out in a dropship over the midwest, hunting for a mine. And it only took her team two days to track down a mine, waiting for a target to pass by, and capture it.

That was their first lesson. From what Jason read from the report Kiaari sent back, the technician that had been tasked with securing the mine was going to live, but he was going to have new arms. They had no idea that the mines were set to self destruct if they were tampered with after placed. Now they knew, and they'd be much more careful next time.

But the speed with which they had found a mine told Jason that he had to be more active in how he placed them, more clever. Just dropping them in fields and covering them in camo netting wasn't going to be enough. So he started getting more clever. The mines were capable of full flight, so he started hiding them under bridges, under logs, in groves of trees, in drainage pipes, even in small holes he dug with a shovel and then covered over. The mines would avoid obstacles once activated and in the air, and were capable of using their simple sensors when in an enclosed area to determine which way to go to get out.

And every day that went by, at least one more Stick came crashing down.

The Black Ops team also got to see chaos in action, as Jason unleashed another of his little toys on Trillane. This one Tim called _Sauron's revenge_, for it was a metal ring about ten feet across that Jason had seeded in orbit around the planet. In fact, the ring was the same size and shape as a piece of debris that the Faey had not yet captured and removed, for it was in a relatively low-risk orbital pattern, and that piece of debris had been removed and replaced by Jason's device. It didn't cross any heavy traffic lanes for dropships, but it did pass close to the orbital station about once every 90 days, coming within 100 miles.

On that close-passing track, the ring suddenly veered from its orbit. The sensor officers took note of it, but since it was an already identified piece of space junk, they didn't pay it as much mind as they would have if it was something else. At first, they thought that a dropship that had passed through that area earlier had caught the debris in its gravimetric wake and had altered its orbit. When they calculated its trajectory, they saw it was going to pass by the station, and one sensor officer quite nonchalantly called down to have a Faey go out and retrieve it after it went by. When it was within a mile of the station, however, it actively changed course and headed straight for it. They tried to activate the station's defensive weaponry when it became clear that the debris was moving of its own volition, and it was heading right for the station. They got their shields up and their guns active, but not before the ring slipped through and struck the station low on the port docking pod... and when it struck, it annealed itself to the hull instead of simply bouncing off.

The ring wasn't a bomb. If it was, the sensors would have marked it as a dangerous device by going on its atomic composition... but there was nothing dangerous or explosive about the device. It was simply a piece of metal. In actuality, the ring was a large-scale version of a hypersonic agitator, using a modified phase emitter that only returned the energy patterns that identified as nothing but a piece of aluminum and titanium, which was the makeup of the original piece of debris. The true nature of the device was hidden from the sensors. The instant it was annealed to the hull, it emanated a hypersonic frequency that conducted through the Carbidium hull of the station, using the metallurgical signature of the hull as a loudspeaker, which amplified the signal. That composite signal had two functions. The first, lower-energy signal was nearly in the auditory range, and just like his subsonic inducers, it induced tremendous physical discomfort to everyone in the port docking pod. Hundreds of Faey dropped to the deck and began to squirm convulsively when it felt like someone had dropped them in a vat of needles tipped with acid. As they thrashed helplessly, the second component of the composite attacked not the Faey, but the silicon conduit that transported hyperphased plasma through the pod. The composite frequency introduced a fatal harmonic vibration into the molecular structure of the conduit, so great that the self-reinforcing energy of the plasma flow through it couldn't retain the conduit's structure, which caused the conduit to tear itself apart at a molecular level. Within two seconds, every conduit in the entire docking pod shattered along its entire length, venting plasma into open air. After only three seconds, there was not a piece of plasma conduit left in the docking pod larger than a grain of sand. The entire pod lost power and was plunged into darkness.

After five seconds, the ring that had attached itself to the hull shot away from the station, releasing itself. They got a camera on it just in time to see the device overload its PPG and vaporize in a fiery explosion in space, but the device had done its work. It would take them _days_ to replace all the plasma conduit that the device had destroyed, and that meant that the station would be operating at reduced efficiency, relying on its other docking pod and the main cargo bays in the main body of the station. Until then, there would be no lights, no automatic doors, no elevators, and no life support, and all the cargo currently in the pod was either stuck there 'til it was fixed, or if it was food, it was now useless. The Faey already in the pod during the attack would have time to evacuate before the conditions within it became deadly, but when it came time to go back in there and repair the damage, they'd be doing that work in E-suits.

Sure, it was something he'd used before, but they hadn't figured out a way to stop it before, they still had no way to stop it, so why not use it?

That little stunt put the fear of god into Trillane. With one tiny device, Jason had disabled a significant portion of the orbital station, the primary hub of the Faey cargo transportation system. Jason and Tim listened with rightfully smug smiles as they listened to the station commander give a frazzled, almost hysterical report to a Trillane admiral. What was the most satisfying was that general's response when the commander told her that the conduit in the port docking pod had been destroyed.

"It shouldn't take that long to replace damaged conduit," she'd said, then the commander gave her a venemous look. "I didn't say it was damaged, General Mero, I said it was _destroyed_. It's all gone! It's nothing but sand laying in the void spaces between the walls! It's going to take my engineering section two days to lay enough conduit to get life support back! So I'm not being fucking timid with that repair estimate, you ass-kissing bitch!" she screamed. "Either I get more people over here who know how to lay plasma conduit, or the port docking pod's going to be down for twelve days! So send _that_ on to Duchess Iria Trillane!"

Tim and Jason had exploded into laughter, and he had a beautiful still image of the station commander, her face screwed up in rage, pointing an imperious finger at the monitor.

It was one of his biggest, boldest ideas to attack Trillane, and it had been a smashing success.

It also didn't go unnoticed.

Two days after the ring had attacked Trillane, Jason and Tim were sitting in his office with Kiaari, going over some of the information that Kiaari had brought back about Trillane's troop positions, things that they couldn't really learn just by tapping into their systems. They were debating which facilities to hit that would be the least defended and 